What would happen if a bot was let loose on the Suggestions forum?

scratchisthebest

ChocolatePi wrote:
But what's the point of having a bot restate everyone's opinion when you could just read the posts directly?

Same. Bots don't have opinions on what would make Scratch better.

Not like most humans do either.

The bot posts literally pointless meme spam, and that's exactly why I think you should keep it

Last edited by scratchisthebest (Jan. 4, 2016 15:43:49)

Sonickyle

Paddle2See wrote:
While this is an interesting experiment, as a moderator of these forums, I would rather be dealing with real humans than bots. Please don't be making a lot of useless posts for your own amusement - that's not what the forums are for.

See, this is why the Advanced Forums need a dedicated sandbox subforum.

Or maybe all of you AT'ers need to make your own forums. :^)

DigiTechs

Paddle2See wrote:
While this is an interesting experiment, as a moderator of these forums, I would rather be dealing with real humans than bots. Please don't be making a lot of useless posts for your own amusement - that's not what the forums are for.

So, if one made a useful bot, would it be allowed?

The bot, for example, could tell users when a thread already exists about a topic or what they are suggesting is already covered somewhere, provide a link and then request the thread to be closed.

That seems like a useful bot, but there'd be no point in making it if it wasn't going to be used

Penguin9090_new

wait, this bot was shut down?

chooper100

DigiTechs wrote:
Paddle2See wrote:
While this is an interesting experiment, as a moderator of these forums, I would rather be dealing with real humans than bots. Please don't be making a lot of useless posts for your own amusement - that's not what the forums are for.

So, if one made a useful bot, would it be allowed?

The bot, for example, could tell users when a thread already exists about a topic or what they are suggesting is already covered somewhere, provide a link and then request the thread to be closed.

That seems like a useful bot, but there'd be no point in making it if it wasn't going to be used

Not trying to rage at you in particular, but why doesn't everybody just stop trying to justify bots!!!

The fact is that you are never going to be able to code an AI good enough to accurately make decisions or find duplicates. The best you will ever get is potentially being able to find keywords and potentially categorize posts by them. And even if you can make an AI good enough to do all the above, then why are you wasting your time on Scratch? - you should be working for Microsoft or something!

Lets put it like this:
The Turing Test was invented in 1947 and uses a text interface where you have to decide whether you are talking to a human or a computer. After all this time, the test has only been beaten once, and that was with a program that had been years in the making. You aren't going to be able to create any convincing AI, except potentially for the occasional social experiment.

NoMod-Programming

No support, workaroundable.

NoMod-Programming

Firedrake969 wrote:
Then the forums will be run by bots….

We ar all bots except for you.

djdolphin

NoMod-Programming wrote:
Firedrake969 wrote:
Then the forums will be run by bots….
We ar all bots except for you.

Beep boop bop.

Thepuzzlegame

chooper100 wrote:
DigiTechs wrote:
So, if one made a useful bot, would it be allowed?

The bot, for example, could tell users when a thread already exists about a topic or what they are suggesting is already covered somewhere, provide a link and then request the thread to be closed.

That seems like a useful bot, but there'd be no point in making it if it wasn't going to be used

Not trying to rage at you in particular, but why doesn't everybody just stop trying to justify bots!!!

The fact is that you are never going to be able to code an AI good enough to accurately make decisions or find duplicates. The best you will ever get is potentially being able to find keywords and potentially categorize posts by them. And even if you can make an AI good enough to do all the above, then why are you wasting your time on Scratch? - you should be working for Microsoft or something!

Lets put it like this:
The Turing Test was invented in 1947 and uses a text interface where you have to decide whether you are talking to a human or a computer. After all this time, the test has only been beaten once, and that was with a program that had been years in the making. You aren't going to be able to create any convincing AI, except potentially for the occasional social experiment.

While I do agree that most bots don't have a place in the forums I don't see much harm in some of them floating around provided that the bot doesn't spam and there's a disclaimer in the signature that they're a bot or something along those lines. I'd also like to point out that making a bot which alerts users when a thread already exists for their suggestion is certainly possible, at least in some narrow cases.

PS: I don't consider the Turing Test to really be beaten. The bot which passed (Eugene) was pretending to be a 13-year-old Ukranian boy who spoke English as a second language - which justified the bot's weird grammar.

ChocolatePi

djdolphin wrote:
NoMod-Programming wrote:
Firedrake969 wrote:
Then the forums will be run by bots….
We ar all bots except for you.
Beep boop bop.

Hello! I am ChocolatePi, human cyborg relations!

liam48D

ChocolatePi wrote:
djdolphin wrote:
NoMod-Programming wrote:
Firedrake969 wrote:
Then the forums will be run by bots….
We ar all bots except for you.
Beep boop bop.
Hello! I am ChocolatePi, human cyborg relations!

*mac sad face*

DigiTechs

chooper100 wrote:
DigiTechs wrote:
Paddle2See wrote:
While this is an interesting experiment, as a moderator of these forums, I would rather be dealing with real humans than bots. Please don't be making a lot of useless posts for your own amusement - that's not what the forums are for.

So, if one made a useful bot, would it be allowed?

The bot, for example, could tell users when a thread already exists about a topic or what they are suggesting is already covered somewhere, provide a link and then request the thread to be closed.

That seems like a useful bot, but there'd be no point in making it if it wasn't going to be used

Not trying to rage at you in particular, but why doesn't everybody just stop trying to justify bots!!!

The fact is that you are never going to be able to code an AI good enough to accurately make decisions or find duplicates. The best you will ever get is potentially being able to find keywords and potentially categorize posts by them. And even if you can make an AI good enough to do all the above, then why are you wasting your time on Scratch? - you should be working for Microsoft or something!

Lets put it like this:
The Turing Test was invented in 1947 and uses a text interface where you have to decide whether you are talking to a human or a computer. After all this time, the test has only been beaten once, and that was with a program that had been years in the making. You aren't going to be able to create any convincing AI, except potentially for the occasional social experiment.

It wouldn't be that hard to detect possible duplicates, though, right? Just look for keywords in the suggestion and maybe replies if there are any, and rank them by relevance. (i.e. more matching keywords == higher relevancy)
Then you'd put in something so that it can ‘learn’ keywords based on the percentage of the post it makes up - so that lower percentages are more likely to be checked, then check them through the results of a google search (e.g. ‘define <keyword>’) - if the result is computing-related, it would be marked as a keyword.

In a snippet of pseudocode, it could look something like this:

MESSAGE_KEYWORDS = [ ] # array of keywords
for each post in posts_in_thread do 
    keywords = find_keywords(post.body) # find keywords if there are any

    possible_posts = forum_search(keywords) # search the forum for posts which may match the post's topic
    message = format("Possible matching topics: [ul]%s[/ul]", possible_posts.join("[*]", "\n")) # make a message by joining the possible posts together with the prefix '[*]' and the suffix '\n'
    forum_post(post.id, message) # post to the thread

    percentages = find_percentages(post.body) # get the percentages of each word in the body
    words_to_test = best_fit(percentages) # find out what words to test
    words_to_test.removeAllFrom(MESSAGE_KEYWORDS) # remove all of the keywords which we know about already
    for each word in words_to_test do
        definition = define(word) # get the word's definition
        if definition.topics.contains("computing") then # check if it's computing-related
            MESSAGE_KEYWORDS.append(word) # add it to our keywords array
        end
    end
end

Icely

[offtopic]
When I first saw this post title…

BookOwl wrote:
What would happen if a bot was let loose on the Suggestions forum?

Bad things. Period. lol
[/offtopic]

MegaApuTurkUltra

Icely wrote:
[offtopic]
When I first saw this post title…
BookOwl wrote:
What would happen if a bot was let loose on the Suggestions forum?
Bad things. Period. lol
[/offtopic]

Yes

student6DCS

What is a bot?

Last edited by student6DCS (Jan. 7, 2016 04:26:26)

Dylan5797

student6DCS wrote:
What is a bot?

A bot is a computer making online requests autonomously.

ChocolatePi

Dylan5797 wrote:
student6DCS wrote:
What is a bot?
A bot is a computer making online requests autonomously.

Wow real helpful to a beginner

Dylan5797

ChocolatePi wrote:
Dylan5797 wrote:
student6DCS wrote:
What is a bot?
A bot is a computer making online requests autonomously.
Wow real helpful to a beginner

I thought that was ok

ChocolatePi

Dylan5797 wrote:
ChocolatePi wrote:
Dylan5797 wrote:
student6DCS wrote:
What is a bot?
A bot is a computer making online requests autonomously.
Wow real helpful to a beginner
I thought that was ok

fugetaboutit! also nice icon haha

Dylan5797

ChocolatePi wrote:
Dylan5797 wrote:
ChocolatePi wrote:
Dylan5797 wrote:
student6DCS wrote:
What is a bot?
A bot is a computer making online requests autonomously.
Wow real helpful to a beginner
I thought that was ok
fugetaboutit! also nice icon haha

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